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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24013216">A rainy night in Paris</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DorkWingsRise/pseuds/DorkWingsRise'>DorkWingsRise</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Miraculous Ladybug</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU, Aged Up, F/F</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 23:34:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,717</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24013216</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DorkWingsRise/pseuds/DorkWingsRise</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Spring brings rain to the quiet hours.  How quiet is the hour? Miles Davis's  Nuit Sur Les Champs-Elysees  (1958) quiet.   How do I know this?  Because the rain holds two young women captive from sleep, and they told me; and they will tell you too, if you listen.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Chloé Bourgeois/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>63</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chez Marinette</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rain drums against the window, the drops seeming to stick before sliding along the glass, trails gathering to form streams that race downward, leaving only the tiniest droplets in their wake.  Then more raindrops and more streams until the water somehow transfers through the glass to run down the still, tired face of Marinette Dupain-Cheng.  “God damnit.”  She looks over her shoulder where Tikki lies motionless.  It has been a hard day.  Week.  Year. Decade.  Pick a frame; it has all been hard. <br/> <br/>She wipes the tears from her face and settles back to gaze at the rainy night.  Paris never sleeps, it is true; but at this hour, Paris is a slower, quieter city.  “Where is the line, “ she wonders.  “At what point does a person slip from the romance of Paris in the rain to this?”  She knows this to her very core:  Despite her exhaustion and despite the rain, she needs to move, to get out of her apartment, to feel Paris racing beneath her, to breathe.<br/> <br/>“I’m so, so sorry, Tikki.  Spots On!”<br/> <br/>A blur of red and black and she slips out of her window and disappears into the dark.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Night run</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A frantic night-run through the Paris rooftops.  ( The Golden Palominos:  Rain Holds )</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She explodes into the night from her window, arms stretched outward, body seeming to hang in space as gravity pulls against her leap.  It would be a long, dark, wet fall, but already her yoyo has wrapped around a flag pole.  She feels the rush, the tension running down the magical thread and through her arms, the faint burning in her hands, the snap of her shoulder sockets, and then she is through the trough, whipping around and up. She frees her yoyo with a thought as she summersaults between buildings, somehow already casting a throw to a chimney that she knows must be hiding in the wet distant shadows.<br/> <br/>She is moving fast, right at the edge of her control,  rain -- or is it tears? -- trailing down her stinging cheeks. Beyond the clouds, the sky is bright, the moon waxing near full, and as she tumbles, her sense of depth blurs.  Are the darkest pockets of the sky the thick clouds or the night sky beyond?   Is that bright wash a ray of moonlight or a streetlight?<br/> <br/>And as she pushes herself, she is more and more aware of her exhaustion.  Her yoyo grabs then slips. Her tumbling has lost precision, has acquired a spin.  Hands grasp stone as she guides her body around a corner high above the streets, but her fingers can’t hold.  And with every move, her run becomes wilder, and her speed becomes a thing of its own.<br/> <br/>There is safety not far away.  A suite still lit at this impossible hour.  She front handsprings the length of a roof, leaping and tucking to burn off speed, but she can already tell that it won’t work, that she is coming in way too hot, and that she will miss high.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chez Chloé</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Meanwhile, across town, the rain has pulled Chloé Bourgeois from her restless bed and spun her thoughts back in time.</p>
<p>( Chloe has Joan Armatrading's "Love and Affection" playing on her turntable.  No vintage vinyl was harmed in the making of this scene.)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>  “What is with this rain?” Chloé raised her wine glass but stopped without sipping, her attention caught by Paris at night, its lights shattered to pieces here and smeared to dreamscape there. Adrien had explained to her once how the rain played the city like a piano; each randomly striking drop ringing a tone, the tones equally distributed across the audible range to become white noise. Miraculous. Chloé glanced over to her turntable, where a stylus and spinning vinyl disk somehow kept Chloé hanging on even in the worst times. Also miraculous.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  Chloé set down her wine glass and closed her eyes, swaying as the music and rain carried her thoughts back to a night long ago, standing in the newly emptied room that had been her mother’s parlor, then as now alone with the rain.</span>
  
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Now, if I can feel the sun in my eyes and the rain on my face, why can’t I feel love?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  No one — not Adrien, not Sabrina, not Marinette, perhaps not even Chloé herself — no one knew Chloé’s greatest secret, knew that she had the voice of an angel, smooth as toffee, smokey as an Islay scotch. But as the drumming rains wrapped time around her and her younger self, Chloé hugged herself and moved to the beat and sang.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  And who knows what might have happened. Who knows if the rain could wrap one last ethereal finger around someone and pull them to the dark sky? Or if the folds of time could snap taught, casting the unwary traveler down strange paths with no clear way back? If there were an edge, if there were a veil that could be pierced, if there was a land where the rain held its treasures, then Chloé was near it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  But at that very moment, something blasted into the side of Chloe’s building, hard enough to knock paintings off the wall, hard enough to skip the needle to the end of the album, hard enough to snap Chloé back to the present.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What the actual fuck was that?!”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. An interlude at 19 meters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Marinette feels things.  ( Best read to the strains of Colourbox "Phillip Glass" (1986))</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>  She had expected to bounce. Perhaps she still would. Time and physics part ways when the force of impact has pinned you to a building 19 meters above the cold, wet sidewalk. Yes, bouncing was still possible. A yoyo swing to a safe landing?  Less so. And so, her bones ringing, Marinette hung flush against the wet, gritty bricks for ten years, twenty years, it must have been 100 years before she felt her body slowly peel away like the skin of an overripe banana. Still cradled in the hands of mischievous time, she fell, her animal mind sure that both she and the rain fell downward, but her eyes insisting that the rain was racing up along rays of light from below.<br/>  She closed her eyes:  This was going to bruise.<br/>  She felt the sharp bite of concrete against her thig, but then nothing more. No further impact. No further pain. Just horrid cold wetness as rain lashed over her, and the troubling sense that her suit was in tatters. <br/>  She opened her eyes, and much became clear. She hadn’t fallen all that far, really. She was sitting on the ledge outside the very window that had been her target. She had hit—up there. Somewhere. She really didn’t have it in her to look. What was clear, though, was that the whole sitting thing seemed to be temporary. Because numb though her leg was, she could feel that she was not as firmly seated as she might want to be. “I’m on a ledge edge!” She giggled. How funny that seemed. And how etched-in-steel-sharp everything thing in the world suddenly became. How alarming it was to be laughing. How very oily and slippery exposed concrete becomes in the rain. How torn material wants to rip even more as you being to slide. How time, the traitor, could so seamlessly shift from an unreal slowness to a hyper-real rush. Tick Tock.  A sudden sense of vertigo as gravity and rain defeated friction. <br/> <br/>  It was then that two strong hands swung under her arms and yanked her through the window to safety.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Out of the rain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The most low-key reveal in the history of low-key reveals.  Marinette so cold!  Chloé so competent!  Marinette's eventual sleep brought to you by Metric's "Collect Call"</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <em>Not falling.And somehow being carried?Ah.Dancer shoulders and arms.Chloé.Why are dancers so strong?And why are they so cute without makeup.Tiny freckles.Adorable.Why does she hide you.Maybe if I can just touch a little freckle friend I won’t feel so cold. </em>
</p>
<p class="p1">“Just hang in a bit longer, Ladybug.I’ll get you dry.Somehow.Gotta tell you, though, I don’t think I can do that while you are in your suit.Or what’s left of it.Going to put you on my couch.Can you sit?Just for a second?I’m going to get some towels.”</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>I can sit.Oh, wait.Need to say that out loud.Too late, she is going.Gone.Gone on those crazy dancer legs.Need to tell her later.Freckles and black night-shirt are both keepers. Make a note.Put it in my yoyo. Just need to find my arms.</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">“Ok, back.Let me get your hair dry, but, yeah, we need to get you out of this suit.Your boots are leaking water everywhere.Which is fine, but I can’t get you warm this way.”</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>Squishy, splorky, cold boots.Off!</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">“Sweetie, I don’t think you can just kick those off.You know you are safe here, right?”</p>
<p class="p1"><em>Don’t break my heart, Chloé.Trust you.Of course I trust you.Oh wait.Need to use words.So tired.Gonna bounce out of this transformation the hard way, I think.C’mon, Marinette, use your words.</em>“Spots off!”</p>
<p class="p1">“Marinette!Right.Marinette.Who else could you be?Only thing that has made sense all night.Right.Ok, Mari, your t-shirt and cute little pajama shorts are as wet as your suit was.So I’m sorry, but we need these off.So if you can help me get your arms up?Right. Now the shorts—holy crap, you have a bruise the size of Africa on your leg.Let’s get you wrapped in these towels.”</p>
<p class="p1">“ ‘ms-s-s-o c-c-old.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I know, Marinette, just hang on.We’ll get you dry and then we can figure this out.Um, where is Tikki?Your purse?”</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>She is running again.If the last thing I see before I die is her butt, it will be OK.Oh!A little nest for Tikki!So sweet.Love that cashmere sweater.Chlo always looks killer in it.Perfect Tikki nest.Now where did she go?Saving my sorry ass tonight.Came to the right place.Where is she?</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">“Can you hold this cup?I didn’t fill it too full because you are shaking a bit.It is tea.I know you don’t usually sweeten your tea but I think you need the energy, so I added a dollop of honey.Can you sip this?Just hold on just a bit longer.And drink, ok?”</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>More running.More legs.There has never been a time when she wasn’t the prettiest girl.Here she comes again.Right.Drink the tea.</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">“You still look a little blue.So I’m going to spread these blankets out over here by my fireplace. And we are going to have a little snuggle by the fire.”</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>Aaand she is carrying me again.This isn’t even hard for her.Whoa!So much for the pretty silk night-shirt.”</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">“I hope this is OK, Marinette, but we need to get you warm. Snuggle against me and let’s get wrapped up in these blankets.”</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>So pretty.So warm.Little kissie for you Chloé.</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">“Did you just kiss my boob?  Mari?” But Marinette was already asleep.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. A new day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Marinette and Chloé wake to a better day.  The moments before their eyes open brought to you by Fazerdaze: "Shoulders."</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">“Marinette?Are you awake?”</p>
<p class="p1">“Sssshhhhh. Sleepin’!”</p>
<p class="p1">“Droolin’, maybe.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Oh my God, you did not just go there!”</p>
<p class="p1">“I mean, it’s my skin.I think I’d know when I was being drooled on.Or kissed.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Mean!So mean!And stop laughing.You are going to bounce my head right off your chest.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Such drama even for you, Dupain-Cheng!I just wanted to make sure you were feeling better this morning.”</p>
<p class="p1">Marinette shifted so that she could look Chloé in the eye.“I am.You saved me last night.I can’t begin to tell you how thankful I am, Chloé.”</p>
<p class="p1">Chloé couldn’t stop herself from running her fingers through Marinette’s hair before kissing her on the forehead.“You’ve done the same for me more times than I can count.I’m just glad you feel better.How is your leg?”</p>
<p class="p1">“I think the leg will be fine.I heal faster than you’d believe these days.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Is that a Tikki thing?</p>
<p class="p1">“It is.There are three transformations, really.One to activate the miraculous, one to cure the mess that Hawkmoth has created, and one that changes me so that I can work with more power. I’ve just gotten strong enough so that Tikki can push the third one, even when I am not in the suit. Which means that I get stronger faster.But it also means that Tikki is pretty worn down all the time.But I’m stronger now with Tikki at half strength than I used to be when she was fully rested, so we are starting to make real progress.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Except for the past two weeks, Hawkmoth has been machine-gunning akumas at you.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Yeah.He must be trying some kind of siege.None of them have been very powerful, but it has been a drain and we’ve both been so tired.And then last night the rain got in my head.”</p>
<p class="p1">“What was with that rain?It did a number on me, too. Though, I guess, good thing?That was why I was awake when you came by.”</p>
<p class="p1">“And pancaked in to your building.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I wasn’t going to say anything about that, to be honest.”</p>
<p class="p1">“It wasn’t my most graceful moment.So, how did the rain get to you?”</p>
<p class="p1">“It got me thinking about a similar rain just after my mother bailed on us.It was late and the suite was dark.The power may have failed? I can’t remember.My father was out, though.I remember walking around in the dark, listening to the rain on the windows.I went in to the room that had been my mother’s salon, and it was so strange to be there.The room was empty.No furniture, no carpeting, no drapes on the windows.I just remember feeling completely alone, and having the sense that my life was going just be a series of empty rooms in the rain.And before I pulled you off that ledge, there I was, alone in the rain.”</p>
<p class="p1">“What a horrible feeling that must have been.You know you aren’t alone though, right?You can call me anytime, even if it is just because you can’t sleep.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I do know.I just wasn’t able to get my head clear enough to think.”</p>
<p class="p1">“That is kind of what happened to me, too.I just kept thinking about how for 11 years I’ve been the girl who doesn’t show up, or has to leave early, or has to turn down the invitation.I had troubles enough in school with friends becoming distant.But instead of going to University and meeting new people, I’ve been working like mad trying to build my company. I mean, I can’t complain.How many people have a seriously viable business ready to go after Lycée?Most people in the industry work for decades before they’d maybe have a chance to work on their own designs.Thank god for Jagged Stone. And being Ladybug is an honor, even if it means that I have to go missing all the time.It’s just that after a while I just feel like a leaf trapped against the bank by an eddy while the stream rushes past.I don’t know, Chloé, it just got to me last night and I couldn’t stand to be cooped up in my apartment.”</p>
<p class="p1">"You know that you can call me at any time, too, right? My driver could have given us a tour of Paris at night.And, seriously, I’d have walked over in the damned rain if I knew you were suffering like that.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I know you would have.I think I was just sort of trapped with rain-mind like you were.I’m just lucky that I didn’t bounce out of my transformation somewhere between buildings.”</p>
<p class="p1">“You made it here.That’s what counts.”</p>
<p class="p1">Marinette smiled and snuggled against Chloé.“I am so lucky you were awake.As soon as I knew I was in real trouble I tried to aim this way, but I wasn’t sure that I was going to make it; and I wasn’t sure that you’d be awake when I did.”</p>
<p class="p1">“You took years off my life.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Did I really look that bad when I got here?”</p>
<p class="p1">“Oh, I meant when you kissed my boob.”</p>
<p class="p1">“You bitch!You total bitch.Oh no.You are not laughing about this.”</p>
<p class="p1">“So totally not laughing,”Chloé said through tears.</p>
<p class="p1">“RIP me.”</p>
<p class="p1">“No, Marinette, it was sweet, really.It was the one thing that made me think that maybe you were going to be ok.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Good.But— Look, this isn’t because of last night — though I’d have to have really died if sleeping in your arms didn’t move me.So, ok, partly because I got to use your naked body as a pillow.”<em>Shit, I am babbling.</em>“Um.I’m guessing it had to be obvious that I was feeling—”</p>
<p class="p1">“Yeah, it did kind of spring to my attention.But you were sleeping and I wasn’t sure.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I mean I’m not sleeping now and I feel like my body is screaming at you.And, uh vice-versa.And it is killing me that I don’t know what you think.So I’m just gonna say this and please don’t hate me:I’d really like to do a more thorough job of kissing you.”</p>
<p class="p1">Chloé rolled Marinette over and pinned her gently to the blankets.“I want that so much, Mari, but—”</p>
<p class="p1">“Wait, Chloé, don’t cry sweetie.It is ok.I really didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.Just forget that I said it, ok?”</p>
<p class="p1">“No, sorry.I mean, I’m not uncomfortable.I’m just really scared.If we do this, what’s going to happen?What am I going to do when you walk out the door back to your life.I’m afraid you are going to take away a piece of me that I’ll never get back and that it will hurt a bit when you aren’t here.Or worse, it will hurt a bit when you are here.How am I supposed to go on when my one, sure fire smile is now just one more thing that hurts?”</p>
<p class="p1">“Here,scoot over and sit with me, Ok?I completely understand why you are afraid.We kind of did this in the wrong order so of course it is scary.Give me your hand. “</p>
<p class="p1">"You are so beautiful, Marinette.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Back at ya, Chloé.Now, hey, eyes up here, at least for a minute, Ok?”</p>
<p class="p1">“Sorry.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Don’t be.I just need your eyes for a minute.Chloé Bourgeois, you should know that when I leave here today, I’m leaving behind a large part of me whether we make love or not.That may not even be a recent thing.If you ask me what defines me in real, practical, day to day terms,it is just my family, my passion for design, Ladybug — which sort of just happened to me but whichI also actively choose every day — and you.”</p>
<p class="p1">“That wasn’t always such a positive thing.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Who knows what it was.I didn’t know what the hell to do with you, and I was just this anxious, jealous mess.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I absolutely didn’t know what to do with you.And the things that leapt to mind were either unacceptable or impossible.”</p>
<p class="p1">“You could have asked me out.I would have said ‘yes.’To be fair, until Lycée, I probably would have melted down and made a mess of it all.But eventually I would have come around and tried to say ‘yes.’”</p>
<p class="p1">“If someone asked you out, it wasn’t going to be me.I was trained too well to think that I was flawed.Coming out to myself was very, very hard.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I kind of wondered.”Marinette rubbed her thumb gently over the back of Chloé’s hand. “So, here’s what I wanted to say:Chloé, will you be mine?”</p>
<p class="p1">Chloé bit her lip.“I kind of hate my therapist right now, but what do you see as being yours?”</p>
<p class="p1">“You had to ask!Argh.Ok.I kind of hate the word ‘girlfriend’ because it sounds so schoolgirl.But ‘partner’ sounds so contractual and emotionless and that is so not —”</p>
<p class="p1">“Yes.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Wait, I haven’t even figured out the right word yet!”</p>
<p class="p1">“Well it sounds like you are thinking something committed.Serious.Long-term.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I am.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Then, yes.I think I need at least that.”</p>
<p class="p1">“But now it sounds like a bare minimum, and you deserve more than that.Hell, I deserve more than that.What do you really want, Chloé.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Noooo.It’s just…it’s just too much.This is good.”</p>
<p class="p1">Marinette leaned toward Chloé until their foreheads touched.“Damnit, Bourgeois, how much time have we wasted?Just— I promise you, I promise you with everything that I’ve got, nothing that you can want of me is too much or too soon.”</p>
<p class="p1">Chloé sighed, then she kissed Marinette’s forehead and stood up.“C’mon.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Where are you taking me?Bedroom?”</p>
<p class="p1">“Through the bedroom.Through.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Oh, I see.‘Through.’”</p>
<p class="p1">“You are impossible, Dupain-Cheng.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I am so very, very possible, Bourgeois. I thought I explained that to you.Wait, your closet?You are taking me to your closet?”</p>
<p class="p1">Chloe lifted swung up a padded bench-seat and typed in a series of numbers on a keypad.</p>
<p class="p1">“You have an actual freaking safe?”</p>
<p class="p1">“Mostly for fire protection.I don’t think the serious criminals let a safe slow them down too much.”</p>
<p class="p1">Marinette leaned forward, straining up on her toes for a better view over Chloé’s shoulder as she dig through the mass of folders.</p>
<p class="p1">“That is a whole lot of fascinating paper you have there, Chloé.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Mostly my Grandmother’s.The Bourgeois tradition is to pass things along from grandparent to grandchildren. I think it smooths over inheritance squabbles?Or encourages grandchild production?Probably both.Anyway, my Grandmother died when I was very young.I have just a faint memory of her.I didn’t know about any of this until I turned 21, when all of this…stuff…became mine.That’s how I wound up with controlling interest in the Hotel, by the way.”</p>
<p class="p1">“Did your father know that was coming?”</p>
<p class="p1">“He did.And it was fine.He is an awful businessman and I think he knows it.Hrm.Not this folder.I think this folio contains the transaction history for this building.”</p>
<p class="p1">“You aren’t leasing?”</p>
<p class="p1">“No, we’ve owned this building forever. Sometimes it feels like we have all of the short buildings in Paris.Ah, here.”</p>
<p class="p1">Chloé pulled out an accordion folder and rooted around until she found a small bag of soft leather. She peeked inside and smiled up at the puzzled Marinette. Then she and pulled a very plain looking jeweler’s box from the bag and gracefully dropped to one knee, posture perfect and eyes so hopeful it could break a person’s heart.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>If you are wondering what is in Chloé's bag, think something from a few hundred years past to do with old mine cut diamonds.</p>
<p>Thanks to all of you for sticking with me through 6 chapters!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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